


burn it to the ground

by Cards_Slash



Series: Homebrew Bingo - a series of unrelated, multifandom fics [1]
Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, M/M, non-con branding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-12
Updated: 2012-08-12
Packaged: 2017-11-11 23:50:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/484270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cards_Slash/pseuds/Cards_Slash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>if he doesn't tell, maybe nobody will ever know, maybe he'll forget.</p>
            </blockquote>





	burn it to the ground

It hurt. 

Maybe it was more complicated than that because Clint had been hurt a hundred, maybe thousand, different ways. His body was a map of scars and reminders that left his dossier bulging at the seams with detailed reports of his near misses. He'd gotten better though, he'd learned how to compensate for his weaknesses, how to distrust as a matter of principle and how to never-ever let his guard down or be caught without a weapon within easy reaching distance. So it wasn't that it hurt, exactly, but how it hurt.

The first layer was the bubbled skin at the edges of it, the open and oozing sores that he'd rubbed past the point of his own endurance during the fight that followed. By the time he peeled his sweat-and-blood sticky uniform off and dropped it on the floor the whole of his flank was an aching-throbbing-stinging-burning-bleeding-oozing infected mess where his skin had once been. He spread his fingers across the outline of it, mouth twisted in a grimace that might have been a high-and-decidedly unmanly shriek of pain if only he'd been out of hearing distance. Nat was worried about his head and that was more than enough worry to be getting on with. 

And with the first layer was the second, the agonizing scrub to pull away the dead skin and yellow-green ooze of infection. He stood in the bathroom of his modest apartment while Natasha made pretenses about sleeping on his couch when she couldn't come out and admit that she needed to know he was okay, that she needed to be reminded she was okay too. He folded a belt over and put it between his teeth and almost passed out twice before he'd managed to scrub it clean enough he thought he'd escape the inevitable infection (at least until he made it to SHEILD for the required physical. He had bandages in the cabinet and he did his best at a field dressing with shaking-exhausted fingers and a never ending burst of agony every time he moved.

Four, he thought, must have been that he couldn't hide anything from Nat. She was there, with her eyes full of sympathy (and knowledge, that kind of bone-deep knowledge that maybe he'd never possess). She was weary, beaten, bruised everywhere her skin was bare for him to see. The make-up she must have been wearing hours ago was nothing but streaks on her face now and she took the bandages from his worthless-shaking hands. She was stiff and slow when she crouched next to his body to look at it. He closed his eyes, gasped out something that might have been a sob if he'd let it go that far and tipped his head back. Even that little motion made the skin pull and the pain stab at him again.

"Not the tattoo I would have picked for myself," he said. It didn't sound like his voice, sounded mangled and distracted and on the verge of tears he'd been doing such a fucking good job of avoiding.

Natasha looked up at him--all that sympathy, all of that understanding--and he couldn't take it so he turned his head and let him avoid it for now. Her fingers were softer than his, lighter at touching, and she wrapped the bandages into place because she must have known there wasn't a part of his body that didn't burn just like the brand set so deep into his skin he felt like it must have burnt through to the bones.

"This wasn't you," she told him. It wasn't much comfort, but she had lived with the awful truth of her life long than he had. It hadn't been a full day for him yet and maybe she understood how he wanted to double over and puke every-terrible-thing out. Like he could just vomit it out of his head, out of his body, out of skin. But her hands caught him by the face and pulled him back. "Come on," she said, "I'll get you something for the pain."

Five was knowing that she had to know what Loki did to him, six was knowing that she had to know that he'd agreed to it, that he'd asked for it and maybe seven was how he didn't know how to deal with that. 

"Nat," he said because he was desperate, because he thought he'd explode from it, because he was helpless now, without a fight, and she was right there and she knew everything. He hadn't cried in years, he hadn't cried in so long he'd forgotten what it felt like at the back of his throat and just behind his nose. He had forgotten how it twisted in his lungs until he couldn't breath or think except to try to hold it back. He was choking on it, strangling himself with denial and anger and something that hurt so much it tore straight through him.

Eight was when he cried, at last, when he broke the way Loki must have wanted him to break. In his bathroom, folding to the floor with only Natasha there to grab him around the shoulders and hang on. She wrapped her arms around him and he caught at the too-loose shirt she'd borrowed from him and cried so hard it made her body shake with it. She whispered things to him, nonsense-things, in English, in Russian, in whatever language she thought he'd hear. It didn't matter what she said but that she knew--better than anyone else could have--exactly what Loki had done to him.

The ninth, maybe the millionth, maybe so deep there was no number for it, part of the hurt was this:

Loki's smile, the quiet, pleased, loving expression in his eyes when he touched Clint's face. There was a bruised darkness under Loki's eyes that Clint understood and there was a clever-pleased smile on his face that Clint couldn't understand. But Loki's hands were deceptive and soft, pressing here-and-there on his face, in his hair, going down his chest to where his heart was beating hard against his chest. There was nothing left of the man he'd thought he was but pure devotion to the Tesseract, to the one that could wield its power, to Loki.

"It will only hurt a moment," Loki promised him. It wouldn't have mattered to Clint if it hurt for a thousand years because he would have done whatever Loki wanted him to. He leaned into the touch of hands on his chest, eyes half-closed, breath uneven, and just letting Loki touch him however he pleased. They were off to the side, out of the way of the busy bodies moving around following the orders without asking why. Clint didn't know why but he knew that his fealty to Loki, his love for Loki, ran so deep through the center of him that he wasn't sure it could ever be rooted out again. 

Loki smiled at him again, head tipped to one side, his lips as sharp as knives and his eyes so full of exhaustion. When he kissed Clint it wasn't sweet or loving, or even a promise for something better to come. It was only a touching of their mouths as his hands slipped lower down his body, pushing at the waistband of his pants so they tight across his hipbones and maybe lower still, caught on his thighs.

(When Clint thought about it, long after, he was sure that he would have let Loki take him--would have given up everything he had and Loki must have known it and maybe that was why he smiled, why he chuckled so close to him.)

"You have my permission to scream," Loki whispered against the dampness of his lips. His hand was cool and soft on Clint's face as the other pressed against his flank went suddenly freezing and then so hot all at once that it felt as if he were trying to shove his whole fist through Clint's body.

He didn't scream, but tilted his face against Loki's hand, teeth bared and body heaving from the pain, but he didn't scream. No, just licked the taste off Loki's bluish-skin and thought of how desperately he wished to please him.

"There now," was what Loki said when he moved away again, "you were so good. You were so very good for me." And he stroked his cheek again before he left.

**Author's Note:**

> for the 'branding' square on my homebrew bingo


End file.
